What Paul Meant

Review of: "What Paul Meant" By: Garry Wills Paul was the first letter writer of Christianity. His epistles are considered the most pessimistic writings of the early church. Despite the pessimism of Paul's epistles, he guided the early church and aided the growth of the early church. The author, Garry Wills, calls the growth of the early church an explosion of belief. He says of Paul: "Paul was part of this explosion of belief." Garry Wills says that Nietzsche called Paul the "dysangelist" or the bad news bearer, and "a man with a genius for hatred." This is in contrast to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the "evangelists" or the good news bearers. The author asks the question: "how much of this notoriety is deserved?" His answer: "very little." This book uses seven of Paul's letters: "Letter to the Thessalonians", "Letter to the Galatians", "Letter to the Philippians", "Letter to Philemon", "First Letter to the Corinthians", "Second Letter to the Corinthians" and "Letter to the Romans." These are the letters whose authorship is not disputed. Author Wills shows that Paul echoed and amplified the message of love spoken by Jesus. Paul had the same message of love as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John when he reports on the teaching of Jesus. This book also gives details of the life of Paul and of the history of early Christianity. See Also: What the Gospels Meant and What Jesus Meant This book is a good amplification of the meaning of Paul's letters. It is clear and easy to understand and the reasoning is very sound. I recommend "What Paul Meant" as a supplemental guide when reading the New Testament or as a stand alone text.

Review of: "What Paul Meant" By: Garry Wills Paul was the first letter writer of Christianity. His epistles are considered the most pessimistic writings of the early church. Despite the pessimism of Paul's epistles, he guided the early church and aided the growth of the early church. The author, Garry Wills, calls the growth of the early church an explosion of belief. He says of Paul: "Paul was part of this explosion of belief." Garry Wills says that Nietzsche called Paul the "dysangelist" or the bad news bearer, and "a man with a genius for hatred." This is in contrast to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the "evangelists" or the good news bearers. The author asks the question: "how much of this notoriety is deserved?" His answer: "very little." This book uses seven of Paul's letters: "Letter to the Thessalonians", "Letter to the Galatians", "Letter to the Philippians", "Letter to Philemon", "First Letter to the Corinthians", "Second Letter to the Corinthians" and "Letter to the Romans." These are the letters whose authorship is not disputed. Author Wills shows that Paul echoed and amplified the message of love spoken by Jesus. Paul had the same message of love as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John when he reports on the teaching of Jesus. This book also gives details of the life of Paul and of the history of early Christianity. See Also: What the Gospels Meant and What Jesus Meant This book is a good amplification of the meaning of Paul's letters. It is clear and easy to understand and the reasoning is very sound. I recommend "What Paul Meant" as a supplemental guide when reading the New Testament or as a stand alone text.

It is an understatement to say that Paul is controversial. Paul has often gotten a bad rap. As one of the first New Testament writers, instrumental in transforming a universal message, stifled by a provincial culture, into a worldwide faith.. We are told he traveled more than 10,000 miles establishing and encouraging the spread of Jesus' message. His letters were occasional writings. They were dashed off to deal with local crises. Today, we read his raised voice without knowing or hearing the other side's shouts. His words are heated. They tumble out in self-defense and urgent guidance. Where Jesus taught and guided using simple parables, Paul relied on complex theology. Paul may not have written much of what is attributed to him, Wills tells us. Of the 13 letters he is often thought of having written; only seven are now believed to be his. They are 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans. All were written before 55 CE, long before the first Gospels and Acts of the Apostles were penned. Although he is not a biblical scholar, as a voracious reader and a gifted writer, Wills uses recent scholarship to separate fact from fiction. As in "Lincoln at Gettysburg" and "Nixon Agonistes" (my two favorite Wills books) the author looks at a familiar set of facts and draws startling insights. In this book I was fascinated by Wills'- a former Greek professor at Johns Hopkins University - ability to draw insightful and nuanced meaning from his personal translations of familiar New Testament verses. With characteristic clarity, Wills frees Paul from the misconceptions that distort his significance.

if you are tired of the discussions of the New Testament that don't acknowledge when and how it was written, then read this work by Gary Wills. A teacher of the classics, he explains how the genuine letters from paul, the ealiest extant works of the Christian canon were actually written (in a language that was at best the second language for the audience). This work is equally not part of the Jesus Project. so written by a person who definitely is still a follower of jesus - and after all is said and done, that's what gives this its power.

`What Paul Meant' by Garry Wills is a new entry into the growing field of popular and semi-popular / semi-scholarly books on the life and doctrines of the apostle, Paul of Tarsus. Other recent entries into this sweepstakes include N. T. Wright's `What Saint Paul Really Said', `Rabbi Paul, An Intellectual Biography' by Professor of Religion, Bruce Chilton, and `The Gospel According to Paul' by Oxford (Lincoln College) don, Robin Griffith-Jones. And, this is not all of them, but only the ones I've read and reviewed recently. Pastor Wright's book, for example, is a reply to another recent book, `Paul: The Mind of the Apostle' by A. N. Wilson and Wills' book is rich with bibliographic notes to yet other, more scholarly titles. The best thing about this bumper crop is that each and every volume has been written by a major scholar in the field of New Testament studies. Most, other than Professor Wills, appear to have a Protestant affiliation. This is not surprising as ever since Martin Luther, Paul has been the hero of Protestant theology to the likes of Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, Kierkegaard, Barth, Harnack, and Bultmann. My hunch is that the wellspring of all this popular writing has been the scholarly writings of Professor Ed. P. Sanders, who, with some others, has created a `new perspective' on Paul's intellectual background with his books published over the last thirty years. While I have been studying Paul and the New Testament for just a short time, my overall impression at the moment is that what most of these `new perspective' writers, including the authors of these popular works, is to restore us to the opinion of Albert Schweitzer, whose scholarly works on Paul were published between 60 and 90 years ago. Schweitzer's opinion was that Paul's thought was firmly rooted in the Judaism of the Pharisees, and that the century of scholarly blather preceding Schweitzer's work had done nothing to establish the contention that Paul imported Hellenistic (stoic and Platonic thought primarily) thinking into Christianity. I have looked closely only at Paul's Epistle to the Romans, but I do know Platonism quite well and I find it totally puzzling how anyone could consider Platonism to be a more important influence on Paul than the Jewish writings in `the law and the prophets and wisdom' which we today call the `Old Testament'. Every page of Romans seems to bristle with references to Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Leviticus and what have you. Against pages dedicated to theology of the God of Israel, I see one brief reference to a notion that may possibly have been borrowed from Plato's doctrine of innate ideas. Unlike Pastor Wright's excellent volume, Professor Wills' book is less directed at explaining Paul's theological doctrines than it is directed at disproving many false impressions created over the years about Paul's opinions, most of which are more social or historical than theological. Like `Rabbi Paul', much of Wills' argument is with the dispar